Closets and Other Dark Places
by Sakura414
Summary: At a school for students with disorders, everyone has a story. (content may be triggering)
1. Blood

A/N:

In no way am I expecting anyone to remember the three-year-old story on which this series is based, but if anyone does, then please consider this a formal apology for Disorder having been removed with no current plans of re-release until I have time to get it under the metaphorical knife. That being said, this series can also be enjoyed on its own, and is a bit of a look at what Disorder would have been like had its conception been pushed back four years. Should I have further pushed this back until I finish my psych class this year? Probably. But ain't nobody got time for that.

You should also be warned that this story is significantly darker than its counterpart, and you may want to put your feels-shields up.  
>TRIGGER WARNINGS: descriptions of self-injury and mentions of suicidal thoughts<p>

o

_February 2010_

Wet trails of scarlet cascaded down the stark white ceramic of the sink. His pale forearm lay limply over the edge, and he watched intently as the vibrant red blood poured forth from his porcelain skin. In his right hand, he toyed with a metal object, occasionally nicking one of his fingertips on the paper thin edge.

He was slightly sticky and smelled of iron, and his entire left forearm was stained with every variety of the color red, from the bright scarlet that still leaked from his flesh to the deep pink surrounding the open wounds to the brownish color of the drying blood that he didn't have the strength or will to wipe off of himself.

He remembered that when he had initially retreated to this remote corner of the house, he had hated himself so completely that he could have easily ended his own life right then and there, but now, as he stood here and watched the blood escape his body, he felt an almost unsettling sense of calmness. After a day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime of feeling so utterly dead, here he was, standing in front of his sink, arm draped over the cool ceramic, bleeding. And because he was bleeding, he had to have been alive. The angry red that poured forth from his wrist was the only proof that he had left.

"Oh, my God!"

He looked up in horror to meet the equally horrified face of his guardian. Had he forgotten to close the door? In an instant, the part of him that had been brought to life was quickly killed again, and he frantically searched his useless, pathetic, stupid brain for some kind of explanation.

Before he could react in any physical way, his aunt had him by the red-dyed wrist and was dragging him to her own bathroom.

"What is wrong with you?" she questioned- probably intending to sound angry, but instead only sounding distressed- as she opened the cabinet under the sink and fished around for the first-aid kit. "Do you understand how dangerous that is, Kamui?"

He didn't respond. Didn't even look at her. He was stupid, he was reckless, he wanted to disappear, he wanted to die. Never had he been more disgusted with himself. He wanted nothing more than to climb out of his skin and run away, become someone else. Anyone else. Start over and do everything right this time.

Tokiko was bandaging the still bleeding cuts now, all the while inspecting the tiny wrist, which laid face-up in her gentle hand. She wore the saddest facial expression he had ever seen- there was regret and anger and guilt, as if she was just beginning to realize the magnitude of her utter failure as a proper caretaker. He presumed that she was counting scars.

"It's not your fault," he wanted to say. "I'm the failure, not you." He wanted to hug her and assure her that he still loved her, and that his being clinically depressed was not reflective of the quality of her care over the past year and a half.

Before he knew it, his arm was bandaged, and his aunt had moved on to the other side, where she was fighting to remove the metal object from his death grip.

He hadn't even noticed how tightly, how protectively, he had been clutching it, much less that it had been creating a sizable gash in his palm. Upon becoming aware of these two facts, he opened the now injured hand and allowed the object to fall into Tokiko's palm, where it was quickly disposed of.

As she unwrapped a rather large Band-Aid and doused it in disinfectant, she began to speak once again. "Kamui, how much do you know about where I work?" she questioned.

Kamui shrugged. "Gemini Academy, right?" he asked. "The place for the kids with disorders."

Tokiko nodded. "I'm the school nurse there, and I work with a lot of students who are going through things just like this," she explained.

Kamui frowned. He knew where this was going, and he didn't like it. He didn't want to have to move again, start a new life again, and adjust to a new sense of normalcy again.

"I'd like to enroll you there," she continued despite Kamui's attempted telepathic pleas for her to simply stop talking. "They'll be able to give you the kind of help you need to recover."

Kamui opened his mouth to object, but his argument halted when he felt his aunt take his injured hand and saw her staring into his eyes with the face of a mother who feared for her child's very life. He had single-handedly done this to her, and the sudden guilt ripped through his heart like a million knives. He had hurt her so very terribly, and even as part of him tried to reason that it wasn't his fault, he felt like the lowest, dirtiest, most selfish piece of scum on the planet. No, nothing could be worse than this excruciating pain. He had finally reached the very pinnacle of self-loathing, and if there was any way to make this feeling end, he had to try.

"Okay," he agreed. "Thank you, Aunt Tokiko."

x

A/N:

I hope I didn't horrify anyone too much...


	2. Eat

TRIGGER WARNING: anorexia (please proceed with caution if you have ever experienced any form of disordered eating)

x

_June 2009_

"Eat."

The words echoed in her mind as if they had been shouted over the edge of a canyon. Her brother had angrily stormed off over half an hour ago, yet here she still sat, in front of a plate loaded with food, paralyzed as the voice in her mind reprimanded her for so much as considering obeying Fuuma. If she ate, she would lose control. If she lost control, she would gain weight. If she gained weight, she would be ugly and unloved. Nothing, not even her brother's enraged screaming, could make her put food in her mouth.

She heard his bedroom door swing open. She knew that he had taken the time to calm himself, and would not have emerged if he hadn't regained control of his temper, but she also knew that if he saw her still sitting in front of a completely full plate, he would get upset all over again.

"Kotori," came the booming voice from behind her. "Eat."

She squeezed her eyes shut and reminded herself that he couldn't help it. He wasn't himself right now- his anger had taken control. This was all because she had worried him, and that, more than anything else, made her hate herself.

"Eat," Fuuma commanded once again.

A few tears began making their way down her pale cheeks, and she shook her head. She would starve until her thighs no longer touched and her stomach no longer stuck out, and then perhaps she would starve some more. She didn't know. The scary truth of it was that she had completely lost control in her pursuit of perfection, and even as her brother continued to yell at her and shove her fork into her hand and threaten to force feed her, she simply didn't care- and that was what scared her most of all.

"Fuuma," she said quietly, wiping her tears on her sleeve and standing up from her seat at the dining room table. "We can't live like this anymore."

Fuuma's anger seemed to dissipate as his sister softly touched his face with her far too bony hand.

"We're hurting each other too much," she continued. "We need help."

x

A/N:  
>Rushed installment is rushed, because difficult subject matter is difficult.<p> 


	3. Breathe

TRIGGER WARNING: description of an anxiety attack

x

_August 2010_

_Just breathe_, he told himself. _In and out, see? In and out. Don't let those tears escape. Stop trembling. In and out, Subaru. In and out._

_ No, stop. Keep those tears in- what are you doing? Now everybody's looking. They're judging you. They _know_._

_ Just keep breathing. In and out, just like Hokuto always tells you. They're just people. They're not going to hurt you._

_ But what if they do? What if they're talking about you? What do you think they say when you're not around? Even your friends probably think you're annoying and stupid and useless._

_ Because you are._

_ You're so worthless and pathetic. Why would anyone like you?_

_ They probably don't._

_ No, stop. In and out. You're fine. Nobody's going to hurt you._

_ But they're all staring now, and they want to know what's wrong, and they probably think you're a freak, and oh God I can't breathe._

_ Inandoutinandoutinandout._

_ Oh, God, why can't I breathe? When did it get so warm? Am I dying? Am I dead?_

_ Get me out of here._

_ Everyone is staring._

_ I want to be invisible._

_ My heart is going to explode._

_ I'm scared I'm scared I'm scared I'm scared oh God I'm scared._

_ Go away go away go away._

_ Who is touching me? Oh God don't touch me._

_ I'm suffocating. I'm dying. I'm dead. I'm in Hell._

_ Stop._

_ Keep your head down. Breathe. You're okay. It's only Hokuto; you're okay. There's that oxygen; you're okay. You're alive. You're fine. Just keep breathing. In and out._

_ In and out._

_ In and out._


	4. Disease

WARNING: homophobia

DISCLAIMER: None of the opinions expressed in the following installment are in any way reflective of my own views. I myself am about as straight as a curly fry.

x

_September 2007_

He had been told that it was a disease. That there was something wrong with him. For years, his mother had been trying to send him to the academy, but the admissions office refused to believe that anything was "wrong" with her son. But she knew, and she made sure that he knew. She wanted him to return to that dark, cold place where he was restrained and confined in every imaginable way, forced to repress every fiber of his being that screamed louder and louder that this was how it was supposed to be.

So when she finally found a new flaw- more like a quirk, really; a character trait that had truthfully never concerned her in the least- both she and her son jumped on the opportunity to send him away. She for the chance that someone there would see the true problem and "heal" him, and he for the chance to spread his wings, escape from that house, and be who he was.

When the chains had been broken and he moved into the strange school, he amped up the crazy; tried more and more to convince those around him that he really did have sociopathic tendencies. If anyone found out why he was really here, surely they would try to "cure" him. After all, he was gay, and that was a disorder, too.

x

A/N:

Every review is equivalent to one slap in the face for homophobic!Setsuka.


	5. Bandages

TRIGGER WARNING: mentions of self-injury

x

_March 2010_

It had been a long and difficult three weeks, and Kamui doubted that he had ever felt so grateful to be outside. After having been admitted to the local hospital's psych ward, going through session after session of therapy, having doctors and nurses breathing down his neck constantly, and losing nearly all of his freedom (probably rightfully so, he thought), he was finally discharged and sent to Gemini Academy, where he now sat on the balcony jutting out from his remarkably nice dorm room.

He smiled faintly as a cool gust of March wind caressed his thin frame. Taking in a deep breath of the fresh air and relishing in the lack of hospital smells that came with it, he slowly unwound the now slightly dirty gauze bandage that adorned his lower arm. Slowly, hints of pink began to show themselves where the delicate skin had been irritated. Each of the wounds was healing rather nicely, none of them showing any telltale signs of infection as they scabbed over and scarred. Some of them still stung slightly on the sensitive flesh, and many still glowed with an irritated scarlet color, but if cared for properly, Tokiko had assured him that they would eventually become nearly invisible.

He ran his fingertips over the skin, hitting bumps along the way as he glided over the various cuts, before reaching for the brand new bandage that sat on the little table beside him. He carefully unrolled it from the neat little bundle in which it had come, and began the process of covering up his wounds, his shame, the angry brand on his very flesh that screamed to the world what he had done to both himself and the only family he had left. It wasn't that he necessarily needed the bandages anymore- not physically, at least. He simply wasn't ready to face each and every day with his worst mistake staring him in the face, permanently etched into his own body. He couldn't recover like that.

Violet eyes closed once more, and Kamui allowed tears to fall down his face and onto his half-bandaged red badge of weakness. He had gone to the therapy sessions, learned countless ways to cope with the dangerously intense emotions he had, and no longer wished to tamper with his body, but nothing could erase what had already been done, and it wasn't easy to come to terms with a life of long sleeves and secrets.

The sound of the door to the balcony opening removed him from his trance, and he found himself dropping the bandage in surprise and sending the entire thing into a tangled mass in his lap.

"I'm sorry!" came a deep voice, full of kindness and concern. "I didn't mean to startle you."

Kamui whipped his head around to face the newcomer and reflexively turned his upward-facing arm down. "It's fine," he said softly, all the while studying the other boy's sharp, masculine facial features.

The aforementioned "other boy" took a seat beside Kamui and extended a hand cordially. "I'm Fuuma," he introduced. "You must be our new roommate. Kamui, right?"

The smaller male nodded, accepting his new roommate's handshake and burying his opposite arm in the mess of gauze laying in his lap.

"Do you need help with something there?" Fuuma inquired, gesturing toward the item in Kamui's lap. "I do have first aid training, if you hurt yourself."

Kamui bit his lip. "I hurt myself a while ago," he replied, his voice quieter and more raspy than usual. "There's no blood or anything." He had hoped that Fuuma would take this as a rejection of his help and leave his new roommate alone, but when the larger boy remained seated, it was clear that such would not be the case.

"I came here because I can't control my anger," Fuuma said suddenly, taking Kamui aback with his sudden revelation of this incredibly personal information. "And I kept yelling at my anorexic little sister. She's here, too."

"I didn't—" Kamui tried to protest.

"It's okay," Fuuma interrupted. "If you don't want to tell me why you're here. I know that I don't have any right to that knowledge. But something is making you hurt a lot right now, and if I've learned anything in the past six months, it's that talking helps."

Kamui hesitated for a moment, fidgeting with the gauze in his lap, before lifting the bandage and setting it back on the small table between the two. Beside it, he laid his red-striped arm, face-up and with the ugly cuts on full display.

Fuuma took in the sight before him with a gentle gaze. There was no shock, no horror, no disappointment or hurt evident on his face. There was only the comforting smile of someone who accepted everything that Kamui's body was, scars and all, without mourning the loss of everything that he could have become in the absence of his depression, nor thrusting repulsive stereotypes upon him. It was the most refreshing presence Kamui had been in in a very long time- perhaps his whole life. As Fuuma untangled the bandage and wound it around Kamui's thin forearm, rambling on about his life and family and strange quirks that may have made him slightly difficult to live with, Kamui kept his eyes focused on the steady hands that dressed his already closed up wounds, and in the world that had for so many years made him feel small and vulnerable, he finally felt safe.

Maybe life could be beautiful again.

x

A/N:

I made a reference to _The Red Badge of Courage _by Stephen Crane, and I am ashamed. I read it three years ago, and it remains my least favorite book I've ever been forced to read by the school system.


	6. Zero

TRIGGER WARNING: anorexia and body dysphoria (again, please proceed with caution if you have ever experienced any form of disordered eating)

x

_August 2009_

Kotori stood in the fitting room in the women's section of the local department store, tightly clutching a pink sundress. She had never been one to use foul language, but as she stood here, still wearing only her underwear and bra, with her back to the mirror and her eyes glaring viciously at the tag on the garment in her hands, she mumbled every curse word in her vocabulary. This dress was a size zero, so why wasn't it zipping? She definitely wore a size zero- she had worked too hard to not be completely sure of this. Frustrated, she leaned against the door and closed her eyes, careful not to look at her all but naked body in the mirror across from her, and frantically ran through a mental list of everything she had eaten over the past several days.

An apple from the cafeteria, forty calories. A water bottle, zero calories. That chocolate bar that Fuuma had forced her to eat, two hundred and fifty calories. The sandwich that her new roommate had made for her- mayonnaise, fifty calories; turkey, forty calories; bread, one hundred calories per slice.

That was it. She had been eating far too much since she had moved to Gemini Academy three days ago. Enraged at herself for succumbing to social pressures, she threw the dress across the tiny cubicle, and its metal zipper hit the mirror with a clang.

As the fabric slid down the reflective surface, it revealed Kotori's image like the drawing of curtains at a theater. The girl stared at herself with wide, angry eyes. Her thighs no longer touched when she stood with her feet together, but they were still far too big for her liking. Her sides sloped in at her waist and back out again at her hips, but if she pulled the flesh back, she could still see a thinner version of herself; a version of herself that she wished she could be. Fat still lingered in her slender arms, and she could feel it with each move they made. She hated how her stomach still swelled ever so slightly at its base, as if it simply refused to be completely flat like she wanted. If only she had more self control, a stronger will to achieve perfection, she wouldn't look so _disgusting_.

She heard a frantic knock at the door of her cubicle. "You okay, Kotori?" came the voice of her new roommate, Yuzuriha Nekoi. "Ya need help or something?"

Kotori scrambled to redress herself and hang the dress that laid in a heap on the floor back on its plastic hanger. "I'm fine!" she called, wriggling back into her skinny jeans.

When she was finished, she opened the door and greeted Yuzuriha with a smile. "Didn't fit," she proclaimed with a shrug, as if she hadn't been freaking out about that very thing mere minutes ago. "You wanna try it?" she questioned, the slightest hint of envy brimming in her voice. "You're so thin... it'd probably fit."

Yuzuriha laughed and pointed to herself. "Me?" The girl checked the tag and nodded when her suspicions were confirmed. "There's no way! That's a zero, and I'm a five!"

"A five?" Kotori echoed in disbelief, looking her friend up and down. "You're so-!"

"You don't have to be a size zero to be thin," Yuzuriha interrupted, confusion seizing her features. "Besides, isn't size zero a little scary? I mean... "zero" is nothing." She sighed. "Not that there's anything wrong with being a size zero- or any size, for that matter- but I don't think you should be actively trying to make yourself disappear."

Kotori fidgeted with the plastic hanger in her hands. "I just want to be pretty," she said softly.

Yuzuriha stopped in her tracks in the middle of the perfume aisle. "But you are pretty!" she protested, taking her roommate's free hand into her own. "I mean, just look at your eyes! And your hair... I'd give my left boob for hair like that! Skinny isn't the same thing as pretty- you know that, right?" She smiled softly. "I think healthy is pretty. And I think that you'd be even prettier if you weighed what your body is _supposed_ to weigh."

Kotori was stuck somewhere between crying out of joy and wanting to throw up in disgust at herself. For two years, she had been destroying herself and those around her, and all for something so superficial as her weight. She had long since accepted that she would have heart failure, osteoporosis, and hair loss, but for the first time since she had first seen her weight at age twelve, she cared. She didn't want to die, nor abuse her body. She didn't want to fight with Fuuma. She didn't want to worry her friends. She simply wanted to _live_. And maybe tomorrow she would cry and want to jump right out of her skin, but she had people who would help with that, and today, she wanted to be strong.

She shook her head. "Come on," she said with a smile, gesturing toward the end of the aisle with her head. "It's about time for lunch."

x

A/N:

Does turkey contain the same number of calories as Tofurkey?

Probably not.

Oh, well.

Yay for body positive Yuzuriha!


	7. Query

_May 2011_

It had been a subject that had weighed on Subaru's mind for quite a while now, particularly over the past few weeks, as his thoughts became more and more consumed by his roommate.

"Seishiro," he said one day, when they were both going about their business on their respective sides of the room. "Please forgive me for prying, but... you don't really seem like a sociopath to me."

Seishiro looked up from his homework with wide eyes. "What do you mean?" he asked. "That's why I'm here, you know."

Subaru nodded. "I know, but..." He tapped his perfectly shaped fingernails on the hard cover of his psychology textbook. "You just seem to have... a considerably larger range of emotions than the typical sociopath."

"You shouldn't dwell on these things so much!" Seishiro said with a bright smile.

"But it's true!" the younger boy protested. "You're so nice to everybody, and you held me that one time when Fuuma's temper gave me an anxiety attack, and I know you're fascinated by figuring out how to kill cockroaches, but if anything, that would just make you a really great scientist- but definitely not a sociopath."

He stopped himself, trying to come up with ways to strengthen his argument without bringing up the heavy subject that had brought this entire thing to his attention. In fact, he realized, as of right now, he had done very little more than list behaviors that were very typical of sociopaths, and he bit down hard on his lower lip, calming himself in preparation for the difficult conversation that he knew was in the very, very near future.

"Also," he began again, more quietly this time. "I can hear you cry when you get off the phone with your mom at night."

Seishiro stood up, and Subaru was sure that he had made a mistake; that the elder boy was getting up to leave, perhaps to switch rooms with Kamui or Fuuma, or to find a new dorm altogether, or to change his name and grow a mustache and move to Indiana. But no. Instead, Seishiro walked the two-step length of the tiny bedroom and sat down beside the object of his very obvious affections.

Subaru sat up from his laying position and listened to the story of the young boy whose mother rejected everything he was, and suddenly felt a pang of guilt for having stayed in the closet for so long when he knew that he had nothing to lose. He found himself leaning on the larger boy in sympathy, then holding him the way he himself had been held so many times, then whispering reassuring ramblings into his curly masses of hair. And somewhere in there, he found his pink lips connecting with a temple, then a cheek, then another pair of lips.

And suddenly, Seishiro had no idea why he was here, because there was no way that something that felt so good and right and pure could be a disorder.

A/N:

It was 4 am, and I spontaneously fell in love with actual-human-with-feelings!Seishiro. So here ya go.

(Disclaimer: Don't listen to Subi-chan. There is no right time to come out, and you should never feel bad about how long you were/have been "in". Just thought I'd put that out there before somebody yells at me.)

For those who didn't read the original, it should be noted that Subaru was closeted (albeit rather comically) for the majority of the nineteen chapters, only coming out in the seventeenth.

This is the last installment that I currently have written, and more installments may or may not come as I find inspiration. Whatever happens, thank you very much for your time thus far.

Lots of love,

Kai


End file.
